Ouroboros
by XSilverLiningsX
Summary: Vengeance is a vicious cycle. Modern AU, extremely dark (additional warnings inside), and established Kai/Lann.
1. Chapter 1

*****Content Warning(s)**: morally ambiguous (or evil) characters, indirect descriptions of violence, implied torture, murder/character deaths, and some shameless domesticity.

I intentionally left (most) of the physical descriptions of the characters up to the readers, so it might look a little awkward. Rest assured, however, that they are purposeful omissions.

Vindictus (c) Nexon. I am simply borrowing the characters for this story.

Enjoy.

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_1984, Izhevsk, Russia_

Huddled behind a pile of dirty clothes, a six years old boy sat, shivering, in the darkness of a tiny closet with his eyes squeezed tightly shut and his head tucked into his chest in a futile attempt to block out the sounds of flesh hitting flesh and barbaric grunts. The old wooden doors did little to keep out the creaks of broken bedsprings and muffled sobbing, and the boy curled up into an even tighter ball on the concrete floor as the sound of feeble wailing was drowned out by a hoarse shout.

A long moment passed, and then another. The boy almost dared not to breathe.

The sound of flesh smacking flesh and someone's, a man's, sickly saccharine voice yelling obscenities returned. Pained whimpers, a woman's, slowly increased in pitch until they bordered on hysterical begging for the man to _stop, please stop, you monster, stop..._

The boy choked back his own tears and bit his lip hard enough to begin tasting blood. His right hand clenched around a heavy object. A dirty sleeve wiped across his watery eyes and the boy quietly got to his feet on quivering legs. Shakily bringing the object up, he made sure that his hands were wrapped tightly around the handle and a finger was poised at the trigger.

His arm pressed against the closet door and with the small gun clutched in his numb fingers, the boy pushed the door open–

– aimed at the man's large, naked back –

– and pulled the trigger, sending a spray of blood flying in all directions from the bullet wound in the man's beefy shoulder. The man howled like a lunatic and turned around from where he was crouched over the prone body of the naked woman; the madness and anger in the man's wild eyes made the boy drop the gun in fear, and the weapon discharged and sent another bullet into the man's thigh.

The man _roared_, and before the boy knew it his thin shirt was in the man's grasp. The man lifted him clear off his feet, leaving him dangling a good two feet from the floor as he swung his arms and kicked at whatever part of the man he could reach.

The was a moment of blurred movement, the deafening shatter of glass against his cheekbone, and his mother's bloodchilling scream – "_**KAI!**_" – before gravity pulled him down, the cold wind whipping past his ears, towards the snow-covered streets below.


	2. Chapter 2

_1998, Kiev, Russia_

In an abandoned room of a crumbling apartment complex, 20-years-old Kai watched, with an apathetic expression on his face, the raucous but slow procession taking place on the frost-slicked streets several stories below him. His long fingers, covered by a pair of worn leather gloves, idly flicked at the safety of the sniper rifle.

His target was taking his sweet time going around the block, as politicians gathering support for the next mayoral elections tended to do.

Absentmindedly, he brushed a wayward lock of his longer-than-normal hair out of his face and scratched at the bushy beard he'd been growing for a while. His fingers automatically found the jagged lines of scarring that decorated the bottom half of his face in a spiderweb-like mess of healed-over cuts. The faded marks were a permanent reminder of what he failed to do a long time ago, in that cramped and grimy concrete box that he had once called a home.

Perhaps when he was done here, he would go and get a haircut in celebration. Possibly a shave, as well. He had gone too long with both, and the extra hair had irked him slightly.

He forced his heart rate remain steady as he ground at the toothpick between his teeth and centered his focus on looking through the rifle scope. A minute passed, and the noise of the automobile his target was riding in became louder as it finally turned the corner. The din of the crowd was almost thunderous as they cheered for the finely-dressed man in the roofless car.

Through his scope, Kai saw the politician's wife, a doe-eyed woman that was ten years younger than the politician, sitting demurely at his side as the little girl in her lap, looking around six years of age, beamed sunny smiles to the crowd. The young girl was dressed in fine clothing in a style similar to the politician's wife and was missing one of her front teeth as she waved a tiny gloved hand around energetically.

_Fuck._

Kai exhaled slowly, his breath coalescing into wisps of cold air. He knew the politician's face. He could spot the man out from a crowd of a hundred, perhaps even a thousand.

The politician had the same face as the man who had fucked his mother to death. The politician was the same man who had flung him out of a window all those years ago, sending a six year old child falling to face his death in the snow-piled streets of a festering ghetto. The same politician who was now campaigning to transform the impoverished ghettos into new shopping malls and amusement parks and other useless amenities for the rich to use.

The little girl caught a snowflake in her hands and turned to beam at her father. The politician smiled and affectionately patted the girl on the head. The doe-eyed wife smiled as her daughter laughed, a tinkling noise that was all but lost in the uproar of the politician's adoring fans.

_Damn it._

The toothpick between Kai's teeth snapped and he spat out the pieces of wood onto the frostbitten floor. He wondered how the politician's supporters would react if faced with the knowledge that the man had raped and murdered nine innocent women and perhaps countless more? Did the guileless flock really not care about the four doll-faced female assistants that had dropped off the face of the planet after quitting within scant days of being hired by the despicable man?

The sniper rifle steadied against his shoulder and Kai took in another breath. The politician was almost in position, now.

Kai shut his eyes tightly for a moment before opening them again. His soft prayer was lost to the howling of the winter winds, "_Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned..._"

Through the scope, Kai saw the little girl look in his direction. She looked confused, but in a moment her eyes widened and her mouth opened as if to scream...

Kai pulled the trigger once, and the politician lurched sideways onto his wife, spilling blood all over the woman's white fur coat and the little girl's maroon jacket. In the center of the man's forehead was a bloody hole that, at a closer look, showed the pinkish-gray material of the man's brain.

The man was dead.

The wife screamed and threw the body off of her, the crowd screamed and dispersed, and the bodyguards snapped into action they spread out on foot to look for the hidden sniper. The car with the politician's wife and daughter sped away, intent on keeping them safe.

Now that his work was done, and the assassin packed up what little he had brought with him. As an afterthought, Kai bent over and picked up the broken pieces of his toothpick with steady hands.

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Throughout the pandemonium, nobody seemed to have noticed the little girl, with her father's blood seeping through her jacket, staring in the direction where she thought she had seen a man in one of the rooms of the upper floors of a decrepit building.

The little girl would never forget the man's expressionless face the moment before he shot her father in what seemed to have been cold-blooded murder.

"Vella..." The little girl turned her head slightly at her mother's voice. Everything seemed so far away...

"Mama?" Gloved hands gently tucked her face into a bloodstained fur coat and shivering arms wrapped around her tiny body.

"Shhh, don't look. _Don't look._" Her mama began to shake, her tears wetting the top of Vella's head. The scent of freshly spilled blood was everywhere, metallic and harsh. She wanted her papa back, not the limp and empty-eyed corpse that bled all over the expensive carpet flooring of the car.

Vella's own eyes were red-rimmed, but dry.


	3. Chapter 3

_2018, Washington, United States_

The lopsided chocolate cake looked almost comically pathetic against the dining table, but the neon green icing that scrawled out _**Happy 40**__**th**__** Birthday **_in big, childish letters temporarily made Kai forget about the demolished mess that had once been the kitchen. He had no qualms, however, about making Lann clean up the goopy monstrosity that had exploded in the oven some time ago, since it apparently had been his idea to bake a cake without a cook book in the first place.

He could not understand how, after nearly 10 years of marriage, his 38-years-old scatterbrained goofball of a husband was _still _unable to make a plate of scrambled eggs without burning the eggs, the pan, and the counter-top, all at once. It was mildly amusing at first, but then it got... exasperating. Sort of.

Kai had been surprised that the house hadn't been in flames when he had returned home from work. Thank God for small mercies, he supposed.

Picking up Ellis, his squirmy five year old son with owlish eyes and a penchant for latching onto anything he could get his sticky hands on, Kai set him on his lap so that the boy was close enough to help him blow out the four lit candles that looked as if they had been shoved into the cake with a little too much eagerness.

Kai and Lann had adopted Ellis almost two years ago after a car accident on a rain-slicked road had taken away the boy's drunkard of a father and drug-addled mother. The child had immediately attached himself to Lann the moment he had stepped foot into the adoption agency, and it had almost been no inconvenience to sign over the papers that now proudly proclaimed the two men as the guardians of little Ellis Huntsman-Fury. The loud, bumbling, and occasionally shy boy was now the light of their lives.

"Why don't you help papa blow out the candles, squirt?" Lann said as he banged and tripped his way into the kitchen with his cell phone in hand, pulling Kai out of his thoughts.

"PANCAKE!" The boy nearly shouted and reached over to grab the lit candles. Kai quickly took hold of the tiny hands before he could touch the cake and possibly cause an accident. He couldn't help the quiet huff of laughter that escaped him as his son half-turned to face him with pleading puppy eyes.

The boy was insistent and his cheeks puffed up in childishly. "Papa! Pancake!"

"It's a birthday cake, Ellis. Not a pancake." Ellis simply blinked at him before squirming some more, trying to reach the cake with his twig-like arms. Lann's phone chimed and Kai could hear him snigger from somewhere to his right as he clattered around in the kitchen for some plates, forks, and a knife. That man…

"Pancake!"

Kai sighed as Ellis continued to flail about impatiently. "Stop that, or you won't get to have some _cake_."

The boy let out a squeaky noise of defeat after his last attempt to reach the candles on the birthday cake was thwarted yet again by a vigilant hand. Kai smoothed the boy's soft, unruly hair as Ellis settled against his chest with a pout.

A few moments later, Lann finally walked into the dining room with the plates and forks in one hand and a knife in the other. He set the plates and utensils on the table before snapping a quick picture, much to Kai's ire.

Lann knew full well his reasons for avoiding his birthday celebrations, but the man had begged and pleaded _just this one time, for Ellis's sake_. Eventually Kai had simply sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, and gave into his husband's demands. It was supposed to be less of a headache, this way.

"Cake!" With his other father in the room, Ellis revived his efforts in snatching one of the candles. The boy almost tumbled off Kai's lap with his renewed squirming.

Of course, Lann did nothing but grin and snap another picture with his phone.

Kai rolled his eyes, but he couldn't help the soft smile that spread on his face.


	4. Chapter 4

_Present Day, Washington, United States_

"I'm going to pick up Ellis from daycare, alright? The Chief let me go early today since there was some mix-ups on the shifts or something like that, so I'm thinking of grabbing some lunch and swinging by the park for a few hours." Kai's eyebrows rose up in curiosity as he stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray that was on his desk.

"That's unusual of him." Fire Chief Aodhan was notoriously hyper-aware and anal-retentive regarding the order of the shifts, so this sudden muck up with the schedules was extremely uncharacteristic of him. On the other line there was the sound of a car door opening; Lann was leaving the fire station now, he surmised.

"Yeah, he looked at me weirdly when I brought it up but then just gave me the rest of the afternoon off. I think it might be because Danaryn's out from the count from, you know, the nightmarish labor, and he's getting stressed out by his, uh, newborn… daughter? Her name's Rudell, I think." A newborn in the household was a definite source of stress for anyone, but add in a hospital-bound wife and a full-time job and any sane man would bend, perhaps even snap, under the strain.

"I'll make dinner, then." Lann's car started with a rumbling purr of a well-maintained engine.

"Can we have pasta? Oh, and love you." Kai almost smiled, but then he remembered he was still in his office.

"Sure. I'll see you both when I get home." With that, the line cut.

He maintained a neutral expression as an office assistant walked past the glass walls and paused for a moment before opening the door and sticking his head in.

"K-Keaghan says y-you have to last month's n-numbers ready by t-today." The young man, barely past his twenties and stuck with a job that skirted the edge of minimum wage, stammered out as his eyes slid from Kai's face and fixated nervously on the wall behind his head.

Kai could count on one hand the number of people who could look him in the face without flinching. It was a sobering thought.

He slid his cell phone back into the pocket of his slacks and nodded at the anxiety-stricken young man. "I'll have it in a moment, Arthyen."

The assistant more or less bolted in the direction of the breakroom and Kai turned his attention back to his computer. He had work to do, and he was determined to get it done in time for dinner.

As he squinted through his glasses at the numbers on his monitor screen and began his filling in the rest of the empty blanks in the large document, Kai wondered, fleetingly, why the hell he had decided to get a job as an_ accountant_ of all things.

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"Can we eat hotdogs?" Lann glanced at the rearview mirror at Ellis, who was practically vibrating in his car seat in excitement.

"You sure you want hotdogs? Or do you just want to see Tieve again?" Ellis squirmed a little in his seat as his father laughed. The stop light turned green and the car rolled forward at a sedate pace.

Tieve was a little girl around Ellis's age that was living with her grandfather, Ernmass, who happened to be the owner of a small restaurant and tourist lodge a few minutes from the park. The two of them had been close friends ever since Ellis had met her at the daycare center despite boy's sudden flushing and stuttering whenever he was around her, much to Lann's amusement.

Turning a corner, Lann was completely taken by surprise when an armored black Humvee charged out from nowhere and slammed into their car with the force of a freight train, sending them skittering sideways with an shrill screech of tires.

At the moment of the impact, the airbag deployed a moment too late as Lann's head cracked audibly against the window to his left and the last thing he heard before he blacked out was his son's terror-stricken wail.


	5. Chapter 5

The first thing Lann noticed when he was shocked into wakefulness with a hoarse shout was that he was cold, wet, and lying down on something metallic. When the painful throbbing in his head dulled enough so that he crack open an eye without feeling like he was going to spontaneously explode, he saw a blurry figure disappearing from his direct line of sight. He could just distinguish his surroundings to notice that he was in some kind of warehouse.

Another bucket of ice cold water was dumped over his shivering body, and when Lann sluggishly tried to turn over he realized that all of his limbs were tied down with leather restraints to the… gurney? His shirt was missing…

"Ah, so _fireman-san_ is awake, _ne_?" A Japanese-accented, high pitched voice giggled somewhere to his left. Lann turned his head to the left as far as he could and he could barely make out the shadowed features of a stone-faced woman standing behind a chair. Another woman was clattering around with a metal tray some inches past where his head was.

"Why don't you say hello to daddy, _chibi-chan_?" Once he could focus past the pounding in his head (_a concussion?_), he saw that in the chair sat his pale-faced, trembling, and wide-eyed son. He had been tied to the chair with a length of heavy-duty rope and there was a piece of duct tape on his mouth that prevented him from making a single sound.

"Oh, I forgot. _Amaranth-san_, could you please remove _chibi-chan's_ gag?" The sound of tape being ripped off quickly and a child's pained whimper was deafening in the silence.

"D-d-daddy?" The question was barely audible.

"_Let'm go_… _let th'kid go, please_…" Lann was slurring whatever words he managed to muster past the concussion, and he gritted his teeth to stop them from chattering as he shivered at the freeze that wracked his body.

"Hmm… I do not think so!" The woman that had been fiddling with the tray chirped too happily to be entirely sane as she sidled over to where he could see her in the fluorescent light.

The Japanese-looking woman addressed someone that had been standing a few feet away from where Lann had been strapped down, "_Slam-san_, please make sure that our guest will not make too many unnecessary movements. I would _**hate**_ to mess up before _Cross-sama_ arrives."

A pair of giant hands pushed at his shoulders with an immense force, and Lann choked out a strangled whine when both of his shoulders dislocated with a small _pop!_. As the haze of pain slowly subsided, Lann could see the woman grinning as she held up a wickedly long knife that glinted ominously in the bad lighting.

The tip of the knife descended until it poked at his chest, right above where the sternum was located. A slight amount of pressure dented the skin, and a pinprick of blood formed.

On the outside, Lann was sweating bullets, and whatever coherent part of his mind was in utter hysterics.

A door creaked open, and a feminine Russian-accented voice called out, "_Miz_ Sparrow?"

The Japanese woman relaxed the force behind the point of the knife and set it back on the tray, but Lann didn't feel any safer than he had before.

"_Cross-sama_! Our guest is awake. I am simply welcoming him." The Russian woman sauntered smoothly up to the side of the gurney and her thin eyebrow arched up in a way that made her look like she whole-heartedly believed that Lann was lower than the dirt under her heels.

A long, maroon-colored fingernail traced his jaw in way that made Lann sick to his stomach. "Hmm… _thiz_ _iz_ _ze_ man's man?"

"Pathetic." Her face transformed from her unimpressed look to one of wild madness as her spindly hands wrapped around his throat and _squeezed_. The restraints around Lann's arms and legs rattled as he struggled against the vice-like grip. His efforts, however, were futile. When black spots began to appear in his vision, the Russian woman released the chokehold. Her hands moved down to splay against his exposed chest, her manicured nails a blood-colored contrast against his skin.

The woman leaned in, close enough for her ruby-painted lips to touch the edge of his ear, and whispered in a voice that dripped with poisoned honey, "_How much do you __**know**__ about your husband, I wonder?_"

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When Kai crossed over the threshold of his house, he immediately noticed that it was too quiet and all the lights were off, throwing everything in sight under a blanket of eerie shadows. He walked past the living room and found it disconcerting that it was empty and the television was off, which was something that rarely (if ever) happened.

The kitchen was just as empty and there were no signs of a last-minute attempt to cook something. All the pots and plates were in their proper places, and there were no puddles of milk or juice on the marble countertop.

Ellis's bedroom was just as it had been left in the morning, messy and worryingly untouched.

Either Lann and Ellis weren't home yet, or something was _wrong_.

As he pushed open the door his and Lann's bedroom, the hair at the back of his neck stood up on end as the first thing he saw was a wall smeared with so much _**blood**_. There was a motionless figure on top of the formerly white covers, staining the bed a deep maroon from all the blood seeping from the multiple visible knife wounds (_incisions, stabs, gashes, the list in his mind went on and on_).

Kai stumbled over to the bed, his legs suddenly uncooperative and weak.

_"_What the _**f-**_"

There was the click of a cocked handgun behind his head, and Kai stilled all movement.

"How great of you to join us, _Gospodin _Huntsman." A woman, clad in an expensive coat the color of fresh snow, emerged from the adjoining bathroom with an unsettling smile that showed all of her pearly and perfectly-aligned teeth.

In one talon-like hand, she held a gun. In the other, she clutched at the limp hand of his vacant-eyed and pale-faced son. Ellis showed no awareness of what was happening in front of him as the child stared blankly at nowhere in particular with unfocused eyes.

Kai immediately recognized her face; she was the little girl, now all grown up, of the politician that had killed his mother and he, in turn, had shot nearly twenty years ago. The woman let go of his son and sauntered over to him, a disgusted sneer on her youthful face.

A gloved hand, deceptively powerful despite the thin fingers, gripped his shoulder and a gun dug painfully into his back. From behind him, the other woman spoke in detached interest, "Kneel."

Kai slowly got down to his knees, his eyes locked onto the bloodied figure in front of him. Even though the amount of blood coating everything in sight was alarming, Kai was able to spot the slightest continuous movement coming from his husband's chest.

Lann was alive, but only just and not for much longer, if all the blood he had lost was of any indication.

"What do you want, _Gozpazitza_ Cross?" The finely-dressed woman threw her head back and laughed, as if he had told a very funny joke.

"What do _I_ want? You know what _I_ want!" Her hysterical shout was accentuated with her palm meeting his face, the sharp blow leaving several scratches on his stubbled cheek courtesy of her sharp nails. His head snapped to the side from the force behind the blow.

Kai, refusing to show any inclination of weakness, didn't even twitch as he replied, "Kill me if you must. I do not regret removing a rapist from this world. I did not do this only for myself, but also for the countless women who suffered at his hands and those who would also become his next victims. Who knows, perhaps with his death I set _**you**_ free as well."

"YOU LIE!" The woman screamed and slapped him again, this time on the other cheek. "MY FATHER WAS A GOOD MAN! HE WAS A GOOD FATHER AND YOU **KILLED** HIM!"

The woman was sobbing freely as she leaned against the bathroom doorway. Her eyes were full of hate as she hissed out through her tears, "I will take _**your**_ life as you took _**him**_ from me!"

She disappeared into the bathroom and the door slammed shut behind her. The sound of the sink turning on and water rushing from the faucet was the only audible sound for a long moment.

Kai slowly raised a hand, as to not alarm the woman who dug the gun even harder into his back, and touched Lann's bloodied cheek. A swollen eyelid cracked open a slit before closing again.

"Lann..." Kai was never one for apologies, but...

A quiet rattle, not much louder than a huff of breath, "M'fin─"

The explosive crack of a gunshot was startling, but the echoing silence afterwards and the new spray of blood that splattered Kai's face was what made him sink his teeth into his bottom lip to keep it from twisting into a furious snarl. He ripped his eyes from the mangled and motionless body and leveled a piercing glower at Vella.

The woman, her ruined make up impeccably reapplied and looking more collected than she had in the past minute, was holding out her gun straight at what was now the corpse of Kai's husband. She shrugged, looked at her gun, and looked him square in the eyes as she said, completely unrepentant, "Did I allow you to talk?"

She shifted her gun to her other hand before aiming it at Kai instead, all of her rage melting away from her face only to be replaced by a sickeningly deranged smirk. "_Spokóynoy nóchi, Huntsman._"

Vella Cross pulled the trigger, and the man who murdered her father slumped to the ground with a bullet hole through the center of his head.

A heart beat. A child's quiet, broken sob.

The man was clearly dead and Vella straightened up, looking as if an imaginary weight on her shoulders had suddenly been removed.

Vella turned to the unresponsive child, pensive for a moment, before dismissing him and addressing the other woman, "_Miz_ Amaranth, arrange for clean up. I will leave you with the boy."

With that, Vella brushed off some invisible lint from her coat and walked out of the bedroom just as there was the sound of another gunshot.

Her smile simply grew bigger until she exploded into hearty laughter as she exited the back door of the house and climbed into her black luxury car and greeted her chauffeur with a childlike twist of her lips.

"_Mizter_ Slam, take me to _Miz_ Sparrow. I need a strong drink!"

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_fin_

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*****Author's Comments and Q&A:**

Q: _Who's who? The last names look random_...

A:** Last Names Reference**

Lann Fury

Evie Sparrow

Kai Huntsman

Fiona Amaranth

Karok Slam

Vella Cross

I took the surnames from the names of a few of their skills. Hopefully they're familiar.

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Q: _Is there going to be a prequel? A sequel?_

A: Maybe, if I have some ideas.

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Q:_ Wait! What happened during the time skips?_

A: I skipped them because I wanted to jump right in. Sure, it flows a little awkwardly, but I had to force myself to keep typing. I am, after all, absolutely rubbish at multi-chaptered fics that flow in a strict chronological order. I prefer to write in short, nuanced drabbles that follow each other on their own pace.

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Q: _Hold up! How did Lann and Kai meet? Who are Ellis's biological parents?_

A: I left both of those ideas up for interpretation, because there are millions of different ways to imagine how everything fell into place. Personally, I thought of Gallagher as his biological dad because nobody likes him and probably wouldn't mind having him being tossed of a cliff, haha. As for mom... *shrugs shoulders*

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Q: _Why are Kai and Vella of Russian origin?_

A: Uhm...

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Q: _You killed Lann! And Ellis! And Kai! You monster!_

A: I know.

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Q: _Where did this idea come from?_

A: A lovely Guest left an anon review in _Amidst The Sea_. I rolled with it for a page or so, but then I veered off course and this came out. So, thanks anon.


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